Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The all-night contemporary art event is returning to #Toronto on Saturday, October 5 with over 110 art projects spread throughout the city. Beginning at 6:51 pm and continuing in the night until sunrise on Sunday morning the event promises some unusual art and almost a million people wandering the city giddy with excitement and a sense of adventure. I will also keep an eye out for the anti-nuit blanche Les rues Des Refuses and hope that they return with more than just the Renegade Rave Parade which became part of the official Nuit Blanche schedule in 2012. Active participation by so many in the community really does transform the streets of Toronto for one night.

"Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is a collaboration of the City of Toronto, the art communities, corporate sponsors and hundreds of volunteers who believe in the success of the event year after year," said Councillor Gary Crawford (Ward 36 Scarborough Southwest). "By making contemporary art available to a mass audience, the city comes alive and we all benefit."

A number of projects will continue on display beyond the one night of Nuit Blanche this year. Also new this year are free, themed Nuit Talks which look at behind the scenes at some of the artists and their artwork and the 1inspired Night art installation featuring videos and photos projected onto a 50 foot canopy of screens displaying Nuit Blanche exhibits. Check out the project’s at the Scotiabank’s Nuit Blanche website (http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/2013-event/project-index.html). I will go through the list and check out some of my must see projects.

From Toronto’s news release: The City-produced component of the event will feature three curated exhibitions.

1. Off to a flying startAn exhibition curated by Ami Barak, an independent curator and lecturer at the Paris Sorbonne University, "Off to a flying start" celebrates the centenary of artist Marcel Duchamp's first ready-made art installation. This exhibition at Toronto City Hall/Nathan Phillips Square brings the ready-made art found in galleries and museums back to the streets.

Highlights:- Nathan Phillips Square will feature artist Ai Weiwei's "Forever Bicycles" sculpture. This complex and abstract installation, consisting of 3,144 bicycles, is the largest edition of this work to date. This installation is the only version of the art work to be displayed in an open air, public space- Melik Ohanian's "El Agua de Niebla" installation increases the scale of the traditional hammock exponentially, creating a strange collective territory suspended above city streets- Alain DeClercq's "Crash Cars" performance piece takes two cars, representative of wealth and power, and sets them on a 12-hour trajectory without drivers.- Faith LaRocque's “Air of Paris” is a scent installation that invites visitors to take an olfactory journey to Paris in 1919.- The basement of City Hall is home to a live freeform performance by shopping bags in the installation "Hysteria Coordinating" by Sherry Hay.- "VSVSVS" will answer the audience's question: Is this art? People will be invited to call "1-855-IS IT ART" for insights, answers and possibly more questions.

2. PARADEPatrick Macaulay, head of Visual Arts at Harbourfront Centre, curates an exhibition called PARADE. The format is archetypal, the route is set, the floats are complete, but unlike a conventional parade, the audience becomes the procession. PARADE will be situated along University Avenue from Queen Street West extending north to Charles Street West.

Highlights:- John Dickson's kinetic sound sculpture "Music Box" is an absurd mechanical contraption that creates frenetic musical noise in joyful response to the carnival-like atmosphere of the event.- Idea Tank Design Collective's light installation "Parallax" uses light to articulate movement creating an optical illusion for the audience to experience.- "Rumbling Drumlins" by AGATHOM Co. is an installation that poses questions about the haphazard nature of the built environment.- "A Quack Cure" by Lisa Hirmer as DodoLab is a performance piece bringing to life a troupe of otherwise-extinct creatures for a night of revelry.- In Margaux Williamson's "How to See in the Dark," experience why the darkness is so important and why it needs to be saved.

3. Romancing the AnthropoceneCurated by Ivan Jurakic, Director/Curator at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo, and Crystal Mowry, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, present Romancing the Anthropocene. This exhibition, on King Street from Yonge Street to John Street, acknowledges the triumph of science and human achievement but also suggests a cautionary message about the destruction of natural habitat.

Highlights- "The Anthropocene" by Caledonia Dance Curry, also known as Swoon, is street art in the form of life-sized, cut-paper portraits inspired by both the physical space and the surrounding community.- Charles Stankievech's "The Soniferous Æther of the Land Beyond the Land Beyond" is a 35-mm film that was shot in the northernmost settlement on earth. It looks at remote outpost architecture, military infrastructure and the embedded landscape.- Brendan Fernandes' "Night Shift" is a durational performance inspired by Le Ballet de la Nuit, a 12-hour court ballet where Louis XIV performed the title role of the Sun King. The work has been re-contextualized into a contemporary dance performance.- Kelly Richardson's "Mariner 9" presents a life-size, panoramic view of a Martian landscape set hundreds of years in the future, littered with the rusting remains from various missions to the planet.- "Tanks" by Cal Lane juxtaposes industrial materials with domestic elements in sculpture by combining opposing extremes of lace and steel recycled into heraldic emblems of a lost industrial age.

Community-produced Independent ProjectsThe community-produced portion of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2013 will feature 67 projects created by cultural and educational institutions, neighbourhoods and individual artists. The projects expand the boundaries of the event and showcase the diversity of Toronto’s art community.

The BATA Shoe Museum, the Gardiner Museum and the AGO along with 401 Richmond , the Gladstone Hotel, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Artscape at Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park and Wychwood Barns and many more organizations are hosting important projects in their unique venues. Entire neighbourhoods including St Clair West, Queen West and the Distillery District will feature multiple installations by local artists.

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